Using the number of hits on Google News as a measure of the “spread” of news via MSM is quite flawed. For starters, such a measurment relies on the speed, efficiency and thoroughness of Google News’ bots.

http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis

I’ve found Google’s newsbots to be quite speedy. The point is not statistical but directional: It is about the speed of news. The web of readers is faster than traditional news; traditional news thinks it still controls the biorhythms of news but they don’t.

http://www.dannytaggart.com Danny Taggart

Google’s result counts are not a good indicator, as the numbers a bit iffy. I wrote about this a while back.

http://michaelzimmer.blogspot.com/ Michael Zimmer

But all this reveals, then, is speed to get things “published” – which I don’t think any MSM person would disagree that blogs are faster. Speaks nothing, however, to the actual reach of distribution (ie, number of readers).

Miyong

I agree with Jeff Jarvis at the lack of statistic data in the speedy news. But traditional news is still working with collecting objective materials.
Fast ones might produce useless defects of information.